Place is more than just a piece of land. It is a piece of who we are. For too long, we have associated this place where Judson Church sits with our European/American roots, forgetting the people who called this place home for centuries before us. Mini Sota Makoce, Land where the Waters Reflect the Sky and specifically this part of the Twin Cities is the ancestral home of the Dakhóta Wahpekute people. It is home to their creation stories; it is where they hunted, fished, harvested, and cared for the land, raised families, celebrated life in community, and laid their loved ones to rest.

We acknowledge that “we the people,” our ancestors and governments, forcibly removed the Wahpekute from their ancestral lands through relocation, warfare, execution, imprisonment in concentration camps, starvation, disease, and forced assimilation. Treaties were made and subsequently broken by us. We remember and lament the history of this land. 

Today we acknowledge and appreciate our Dakhóta, Anishinaabe, and other Indigenous peoples as neighbors and fellow citizens. We commit to do better by our neighbors, to stand with them and to learn from them as we seek to create a community that sees the Creator’s face in everything.

History of our Land Acknowledgement

Judson Church’s Land Acknowledgement statement is the product of many months of research, learning, questioning, and revision. Our first iteration was a brief statement focused on acknowledging the land and it was a good beginning. As we considered this statement a living document, we knew that more work could be done to clarify our intentions. In 2022 we started again, following a process of 1) researching the history of the land and its original inhabitants, 2) constructing a statement that more clearly articulated the truth about the history of this land, 3) making the statement speak to the present and the future with a commitment to action. Two friends of Judson, sisters from Canada and members of the Bear Clan, provided some ideas for making our statement stronger, and with gratitude we took their suggestions for the current Land Acknowledgement.  The statement is read every week at the start of our Sunday service and at every event taking place in the Judson sanctuary.

Thank you

We thank the Native Governance Center for its workshop Beyond Land Acknowledgement, the USDAC’s Honor Native Land: A Call to Acknowledgement workbook, and Dr. Peggy Smith and Mary Alice Smith for helping us develop this statement.